The Imperialist eBook

The South Fox fight was almost over. Three days
only remained before the polling booths would be open,
and the voters of the towns of Elgin and Clayfield
and the surrounding townships would once again be
invited to make their choice between a Liberal and
a Conservative representative of the district in the
Dominion House of Commons. The ground had never
been more completely covered, every inch of advantage
more stubbornly held, by either side, in the political
history of the riding. There was no doubt of
the hope that sat behind the deprecation in Walter
Winter’s eye, nor of the anxiety that showed
through the confidence freely expressed by the Liberal
leaders. The issue would be no foregone conclusion,
as it had been practically any time within the last
eleven years; and as Horace Williams remarked to the
select lot that met pretty frequently at the Express
office for consultation and rally, they had “no
use for any sort of carelessness.”

It was undeniably felt that the new idea, the great
idea whose putative fatherhood in Canada certainly
lay at the door of the Liberal party, had drawn in
fewer supporters than might have been expected.
In England Wallingham, wearing it like a medal, seemed
to be courting political excommunication with it,
except that Wallingham was so hard to effectively
curse. The ex-Minister deserved, clearly, any
ban that could be put upon him. No sort of remonstrance
could hold him from going about openly and persistently
exhorting people to “think imperially,”
a liberty which, as is well known, the Holy Cobdenite
Church, supreme in those islands, expressly forbids.
Wallingham appeared to think that by teaching and explaining
he could help his fellow-islanders to see further than
the length of their fists, and exorcise from them the
spirit, only a century and a quarter older and a trifle
more sophisticated, that lost them the American colonies.
But so far little had transpired to show that Wallingham
was stronger than nature and destiny. There had
been Wallingham meetings of remarkable enthusiasm;
his supporters called them epoch-making, as if epochs
were made of cheers. But the workingman of Great
Britain was declaring stolidly in the by-elections
against any favour to colonial produce at his expense,
thereby showing himself one of those humble instruments
that Providence uses for the downfall of arrogant
empires. It will be thus, no doubt, that the
workingman will explain in the future his eminent usefulness
to the government of his country, and it will be in
these terms that the cost of educating him by means
of the ballot will be demonstrated. Meanwhile
we may look on and cultivate philosophy; or we may
make war upon the gods with Mr Wallingham which is,
perhaps, the better part.